5 times John could have never seen Sherlock again
by benedictosaurus
Summary: ...and one time he didn't.


_John regrets every wasted moment he spends sleeping._

* * *

**1.**

John knew what he was getting into when he moved in with Sherlock Holmes.

John knew of the dangers, the early nights, and fuck his alarm clock because he didn't really need that anymore, now did he?

He was Sherlock's personal doctor now. Which is why it really shouldn't have surprised him when Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes got his scrawny self stabbed in the side.

It wasn't deep, the wound, upon closer inspection. Not particularly dangerous, but the blood touching his fingers still made his insides somersault.

What was deep and dangerous, however, was the sudden stabwound in his back. John didn't get the chance to look at the man - petty thief, had the misfortune of simply not having a steady hand, pulled the trigger on one of his victims, and apparently blind as a bat - before he collapsed on top of his friend. Bit bad for Sherlock's health, he mused, and thought that he could just follow Sherlock to either Heaven or Hell, whichever strook his fancy.

This didn't mean he wasn't thankful he didn't have to when he woke up groggily to blinding white, beeping monitors and an angry, sleepy Sherlock Holmes.

**2.**

'Married to his work,' he said. 'Flattered by your interest but not really looking for anything,' he said. And yet, dictly after solving a case, directly after John exclaimed '_brilliant!_' with a grin, Sherlock Holmes had pressed chapped lips to his. Right on the mouth - clumsily so, but heartfelt nonetheless.

John was not an incredibly patient man, but it seemed Sherlock was as much of an exception to this basic rule as he was to the law.

This didn't make him any less giddy when their relationship progressed from 'lonely wank in the shower' to 'pants off,' and he most certainly didn't attempt to test his luck when they went from 'pants off' to 'several attempts at a proper shag'.

The fact they hadn't actually gotten to the actual _shagging_ didn't bother him too much.

John realised he was a tad _too_ smitten when he looked at the curls behind his lover's ear and wondered if he could stick them in an album without the detective noticing - realised just as quickly how easy it would be for either of them to get up and _leave_.

He had no particular desire to, but he_ could_. He _could_. And a few weeks later, when John is busy cleaning bits of spleen off of the microwave's walls and wonders why he _didn't_, he looks at the curly mop of hair peeking up from the arm of the couch and is glad he rejected the notion as soon as it came.

**3.**

It had been a long time since that time he'd stood at the foot of a building and was forced to watch far less competent men carry away the gurney. The stupid sods had covered his friend's face with a sheet. _Ridiculous_, John huffed, because, if anything, Sherlock would want to look at_him_. He _hated_ hospitals.

It had been one year after when Lestrade broke into his new flat - empty, still, even if it was small - and yelled at him to answer his_ ruddy_ phone. Then, he'd seen the two mugs of tea - cold, milky - and had given John a look so full of pity it made John's stomach churn. Preposterous. Sherlock liked his tea like this.

It had been two years when John left a red welt on Mycroft's cheek when he'd visited only to tell him to _drop the illusion, John, because it isn't of use to anybody._

It was not after three years that John decided to visit the grave - the grave that deceitfully carried his lover's name, but that was just _stupid_, and how many people were called Sherlock anyway? - and he thought _someone_ had to be buried here.

He didn't cry when he came to the eventual conclusion he'd been making tea for nobody, but he did startle when he felt the cold of a hand seep through the fabric covering his shoulder.

It was three years and plus or minus one-and-a-half hour after Sherlock Holmes had made a dark-haired, skinny, pale corpse appear on a slab of pavement and John was yelling and clutching at loose fabric and _maybe_ he was crying a bit, too, because he certainly tasted tears when he kissed the man who'd let all that earl grey go to waste.

**4.**

John Watson was 68, for God's sake and he was too weary of sitting in quiet waiting rooms. This time, however, it was not because of a stabwound, or a bullet, or a precise blow to the back of the head. It was because of the cruel fist of old age finally catching up with them and pulling their thinning hairs.

John Watson simply thought himself too old to cry in relief when a doctor - a young one, younger than he remembered ever being - told him they'd managed to get his husband's tiny black heart to beat again.

**5.**

It had been after Mrs. hudson's funeral when John was reminded of just how close he was to losing Sherlock every day, and regretted every wasted moment he'd spent sleeping.

_**+1**_

John closed the front door of 221 and made his way across the street to fetch milk and a packet of those biscuits Sherlock loved.

He never heard the car approaching.


End file.
